Studies in the Out-Lying Fields of Psychic Science Part 10

"The last time I saw Prince Leopold (being two days before he died), he would talk to me about death, and said he would like a military funeral.

"Finally I asked, 'why do you talk in this morose manner?' As he was about to answer, he was called away and said, 'I will tell you later.' I never saw him to speak to again, but he finished his answer to me to a lady, and said: 'Two nights now, Princess Alice has appeared to me in my dreams, and says she is quite happy and wants me to come and join her; that is what makes me so very thoughtful.'

"I take this to be a sign of his approaching removal to the world of spirits, in which, as a member of a Spiritualistic family, he has been, from his earliest youth, an implicit believer, thus ill.u.s.trating the truth of the observation, that, 'Signs are vouchsafed to the believing, now, as of old.'"

ANOTHER CASE.--Miss Mary Paine, when on her way to visit some friends in Gainesville, Ga., on pa.s.sing the Mars Hill Graveyard, ordered her driver to stop the team, which he did. Then she exacted a promise from him that he would bring her back and bury her by the side of her sister Jane.

"For," said she, "I shall never come back alive. I shall die away from home, and I want you to promise to bring me back for burial." To this declaration she clung, nor would she be persuaded that, as she was in good health she would have a pleasant visit and return home happy.

Before three weeks had pa.s.sed she died of a congestive chill, at her friend's house in Gainesville, and as she had requested, was brought back to Mars Hill and buried by the side of her dear sister.

Dr. H----, who is of exceedingly skeptical organization, said that he once had an experience which baffled his powers of explanation, and caused him to doubt his materialistic views. He had been called to a distant farm-house on an intensely dark and stormy night to visit a patient. There was a stream with wide marshy borders, across which a narrow causeway had been constructed, barely wide enough for carriages to pa.s.s. As he drove onto one end of this narrow way, suddenly there came the thought that he would meet a runaway team, and his horse and carriage be overturned into the mora.s.s. At that time of night this was wholly improbable; but the thought came to him instantly with all its contingencies. "If I should meet a team, what shall I do?" he asked himself. Then he thought there was one place wider than the rest, and he answered, "I would reach that place and get as far out of the way as possible." "Get there, then; get there," was the urgent impression. He involuntarily hurried his horse, reached the place, and, driving to the very edge, drew rein. He was in a tremor of nervous excitement, yet had seen nor heard nothing to excite him more than the interior impression.

But he soon found his haste had not been in vain. He heard the rattle of wheels and clatter of hoofs, as a runaway team struck the further end of the causeway, and in a moment they swept past him. Had they met him unprepared, he certainly would have met with a serious, if not fatal, accident. This intelligence which saw the approaching team and the great danger in which Dr. H. would be placed, was independent of his mind, for it brought a knowledge that mind did not, nor could not know until revealed by some foreign power. Whence came the premonition, the thoughtful care? Not out of the air. It was from an intelligent, individualized ent.i.ty above and beyond physical existence; and all theories which leave out this element fall short of covering the mult.i.tudinous facts which unite and bind them together in a harmonious whole.

SEEN AT HIS FUNERAL.--Dr. John E. Purdon, now of Valley Head, Ala., is authority for the following narrative, which records the appearance of a soldier soon after his death, and may be taken as evidence of the sensitiveness on one side, and of the reality of the existence of the appearance on the other:

"In the year 1872, while in charge of the convalescent hospital, Sandown, Isle of Wight, I returned from a short visit to London, bringing with me for change and rest Miss Florence Cook, who afterwards became so celebrated a medium. On the evening of my return home, I took a walk with Miss Cook along the cliffs towards Shanklin. During the walk she drew my attention to a soldier who seemed to her to be behaving in a curious way, turning round and staring at me, and omitting the usual military salute which she had noticed the other men give as they pa.s.sed by. As I could see no one at the time my curiosity was excited, and when she said the man had pa.s.sed a stile just in front of us, I crossed over and looked carefully about. No soldier was in sight; on one side was an open field; on the other, perpendicular cliffs. I asked a country man at work in the field if he had seen a soldier pa.s.s just before I appeared, but he had not.

"On my return from town I found that a certain chronic patient who had been a long time in the hospital, and on whom I had performed a minor surgical operation some time before, had died of pulmonary consumption.

"Miss Cook and another young lady on a visit to my wife, never having seen a military funeral, persuaded her to take them to a cross-road, where they would see the troops pa.s.s without being seen themselves. As we marched past, the coffin being carried on a gun-carriage, Miss Cook said to my wife, 'Why is the little man in front dressed differently from the other soldier?' My wife answered that she could not see any one in front, nor could the other girl either. Miss Cook then said, 'Why does he not wear a big hat like the others? He has on a small cap and is holding his head down.' They then returned home, and the funeral party pa.s.sed on to the graveyard which was two miles from the hospital. Just after the firing party had fallen in to march home, Hospital Sergeant Malandine came up to me in the graveyard and said: 'Private Edwards reports sick, sir, and asks permission to return by train.' I asked what was the matter, and the sergeant answered that Edwards had had a great fright from seeing the man we were burying looking down into his own grave at the coffin before it was covered by the clay!"

APPEARANCE AFTER DEATH.--_Light_, a journal that exercises great discretion in the facts it publishes, vouches for the following appearance coincident with death, received from Mr. F. J. Teall:

"In the year 1884 my son Walter was serving in the Soudan, in the 3d King's Royal Rifles. The last we heard from him was a letter informing us that he expected to return to England about Christmas time. On October 24th I returned home in the evening, and noticing my wife looking very white, I said, 'What is the matter with you?' She said she had seen Walter, and he had stooped down to kiss her, but, owing to her starting, he was gone; so she did not receive the kiss. He was in his regimentals, and she thought he had come on furlough, to take her by surprise, knowing the back way; but when she saw he was gone and the door not open, she became dreadfully frightened. My son Frederick and daughters Selina and Nellie were in the room, but none of them saw Walter; only Fred heard his mother scream, 'Oh!' and asked her what was the matter.

"I thought, having heard many tales of this kind, that I would jot it down, so I put the date on a slip of paper. After that we had a letter from the lady nurse of the Ramleh Hospital, in Egypt, to say that the poor boy had suffered a third relapse of enteric fever. They thought that he would have pulled through, but he was taken. When we got the letter it was a week after he died; but the date when the letter was written corresponded with the day Walter appeared, which was on October 24th, 1884. My wife never got over the shock, but brooded over it, and finally died April 29th, 1886, of mental derangement."

FOREWARNING.--Miss Lena Harman, as reported in the _Globe-Democrat_, is authority for a most instructive narrative of ghastly interference in the affairs of men, which forms another link in the chain of evidence showing that there is a spirit-world interested in the events of this.

Miss Harman was a warm friend of Mrs. Lena Reich, who was foully murdered by her husband in New York. She had not seen her for several months prior to her death, but the last time she met her, Mrs. Reich told her a pitiful story of her husband's abuse, and said she ought not to have married him for she had been forewarned. She had been obliged to have him bound over to keep the peace, and knew he would yet kill her.

The warning came before she was married, even before their engagement.

In her own words it happened this way. "Adolph had been courting me for some time, and I knew that I loved him. One night, a terrible dark, storming winter night, he told me that he loved me, and offered himself to me. I acknowledged that I was not indifferent to him, but asked a few days to think over the matter and consult my friends. Adolph did not like this delay, and tried to reason me out of it, but I was firm and carried my point. Well, we sat up very late that night together, no one else but ourselves being in the room. When he finally left it was past midnight, and the weather was very cold, so I fixed up the fire to make me a cup of tea to quiet my nerves, and warm me up before going to bed.

I was a little sorry I had been so positive to Adolph about the time, as I loved him and I thought I might as well say yes, any way, so that he would have gone home so much happier.

"As I poured out my cup of tea I said aloud to myself, 'Yes, I love Adolph.' Just then I heard a noise on the stairs, and, thinking some one was going by my door, I turned off the gas, because I did not want any one to know I was keeping such late hours. As the fire in the stove gave out a ruddy light, and the half-darkness of the room seemed so peaceful, and suited my mood of mind so well, I did not light the gas again, but sat and sipped my tea in the darkness, saying little things to myself aloud. Suddenly, however, I heard a slight noise behind me, and at the same time I heard a church clock, strike the hour of one. Well, I looked around without a thought of anything strange, and saw my Ernest, to whom I had been previously engaged, and who died before the ceremony, almost at the altar. He was dressed in the same clothes as when I saw him last--his wedding suit--for we were going to our wedding when he died of heart disease.

"I shrieked and tried to fly from my room, but he spoke: 'Do not move, Lena; I will not harm you. I come because I love you, and because I pity you. Lena, if you marry Adolph Reich you will lead the life of a dog. He will be cruel and jealous, and unreasonable, and, worse than all, he will murder you in the end. Yes, he will murder you! Stay! I see the scene now! He grasps your hair; he holds a sharp carving knife in the other hand; you reach out for the knife and seize it, when, with a terrible oath, he draws the keen blade out of your grasp, and almost severs your fingers in doing so! Oh! he has you down on the bed; he draws the knife; you struggle and scream. He strikes the blade into your neck!--your beautiful neck; you struggle more violently and escape. With the blood spurting from your wound, you run from the room and fall in the hall; and the villain escapes, carrying the knife with him! Oh, terrible! terrible!' Then there was a silence; Ernest said no more for some minutes, and I was too much horrified to speak; but again he said: 'Lena, I love you as much as I ever did, and it won't be long now before you join me here, and we shall be happy again. Oh, do not marry Reich, as you value your life and soul! Farewell! G.o.d keep you!' and he was gone!"

The warning was fulfilled to the letter. After the infliction of the terrible wound which caused her death; she had crawled out of her room, and fell in the hall from the loss of blood. How many similar warnings pa.s.s unheeded, and yet how greatly might the recipients be benefited by heeding them!

Effects of Physical Influences on the Sensitive.

Individuals who are influenced to an unusual extent by their surroundings, are regarded as nervous,--a name covering a mult.i.tude of ills for which no other term is at command. A cat entering the room, however stealthily, in some awakes the most disagreeable feelings.

Another is so sensitive to the electric state of the weather as to presage the coming storm several hours or days in advance. Sunday is so called because of its supposed connection with the phases of the moon.

The superst.i.tious observation of the Signs arises from the dull understanding or ignorance of this influence. That man is a magnet, and has polarity corresponding to that of the earth, is a plausible conjecture, which receives confirmation by the influence of the earth currents on many forms of disease. Some patients are so exceedingly sensitive that they can lie at ease in no other position than with their heads to the north; and it has been argued that if such position is best for the sensitive it is for all.

More especially is the influence of physical forces seen when death occurs after a lingering disease, which, by reducing the bodily strength, makes that of the spirit more susceptible.

"He's going out with the tide," is the common expression of all the rough coastwise people. It may be called a superst.i.tion of sea-faring races; but it is a fact that for some inscrutable reason the old, sick and infirm more often die at the ebb-tide than when the tide is rising.

A poet beautifully expresses this belief:

"When the tide goes out he will pa.s.s away, Pray for a soul's serene release!

That the weary spirit may rest in peace, When the tide goes out."

A physician on the Connecticut coast, who had made special observations, said: "for more than thirty years I have lived and observed among the rough, hardy souls hereabout; and for more than fifty my father before me gathered facts and wisdom from practice. I have stood by hundreds of death-beds of fishermen and farmers, old and young, during the last quarter of a century; but I can hardly recall a single instance of a person dying of disease, who did not pa.s.s away while the tide was ebbing. It is a fact that in critical cases I never feel concerned to leave a patient for an hour or two when the tide is coming in; but when it is receding, and particularly in the latter stages of the ebb, I stay by, if I can, till the turn comes. You'll scarcely credit it, but the daily record of the tides is the most important part of the almanac in my practice. If a patient who is very low lives to see the current turn from ebb to flow, I know the case is safe till the ebb sets in again."

"When the tide comes in death waits for dole, When the tide ebbs it takes a soul."

Francis Gerry Fairchild says that during five years he noted the hour and minute of ninety-three demises, and of these all but four (who died of accidents) went out with the ebb of the tide. In his own words: "I who have sat with my fingers on the wrist of many a feeble patient, and noticed the pulse rise and strengthen, or sink and vanish, with the turning of the tide, know that it is fact."

Of twenty-one cases of death registered on the sea coast of Long Island at Orient, by Capt. D. B. Edwards, I find, by careful examination, that with only one exception, the aged, or those who had been suffering from long sickness, died at the ebb of the tide. Those cases were taken as they came, and afford an average that may be depended upon.

Not that the coming and going of the ocean wave as it rolls round the world has special influence. The cause is more profound, and blended with the force of gravitation. Not only is the ocean agitated and piled up beneath the moon; the deeper and more elastic aerial sea is more strongly fluctuated, and the electric and magnetic conditions change with certain periodicity. The maximum of positive force is attained at high tide, constantly increasing as the tide comes in, and then recedes to the zero of negativeness with its outgoing. With the flood of water, and higher pressure of atmosphere, the forces of life are stimulated by the increasing positiveness. When these stimulants withdraw, the tide runs to the negative pole, and a soul ebbs from the mortal sh.o.r.e. Man is sensitive to the influences of the sun and moon, and to the stars.

The influence of the moon in cases of lunacy has been observed from ancient times, and a lunar month measures the cycle of changes in most cases of madness.

During health these subtle changes are not felt, or too feebly to be remarked. It is during sickness, when the physical energies are so enfeebled that slight forces turn the balance for or against, that the most palpable effects are produced. There are moon-tides and sun-tides in the ocean and in the air. Sometimes these augment, at others depress each other. The magnetic disturbances are much greater at times than others; hence the subject is complicated; but when investigated it will be shown that there is co-operation between vital force and the energies of nature.

A spirit is a harp attuned to respond to the touch of myriad forces. It is placed in the center of these mult.i.tudinous energies, coming in from every direction. It is sensitive to the touch of the sun, the moon and the planets, and to that of the farthest star that twinkles on the verge of the Milky Way; not in the sense of astrology, but in as faithful a manner. If the magnetic needle trembles because of a spot in the sun; if the magnetic currents of the earth are disturbed by activity of the solar disc, can we for a moment doubt but the more delicately ethereal spiritual perception will feel such disturbances? The sweet influence of the Pleiades has more than poetic meaning, and the cold light of the moon brings on its beams the breath of love.

It is well known that many diseases are aggravated by the approach of night, while others are most severe during the day. All nervous pains become intensified at the approach of night--a fact admitted, but referred by material science to the imagination, the fancy having free reign during the silent hours of darkness. During the day, the half of the earth illuminated is positive to the other unilluminated hemisphere.

Hence the sensations of evening are different from those of morning. We have enjoyed the light and been positive during the day; when night advances, we become pa.s.sive in the enveloping darkness, and enter a state twin sister to death, to arise in the morning again to meet the positive day.

Sleep during the night is more restoring than during the day--a distinction recognized by animals and plants. Night is no more terrible than day, yet the mind, oppressed by the negative condition then imposed on all things, peoples it with fancies. The hour of midnight is the established season for ghostly appearances. He who boldly walks along the churchyard path at noonday, would fain whistle to keep his courage up at the hour of midnight. Even Haeckel, the great naturalist, confesses that as the evening fell on him, while alone on the extreme point of Ceylon, and the shadows deepened on the weird forest and lonely sea, an "uncanny" feeling crept over him.

And the soul moves in the circle of the seasons; not only has human life its Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter; in the long three score years and ten, it swings through this circle with each succeeding procession of seasons, and experiences the changing impressions they so rapidly bring.

Unconscious Sensitiveness.

SILENCE AND RECEPTIVITY.--I sit down with the friend of my heart, and neither speak a word; we visit in close communion of souls, in silence; spoken words would be only jarring discord. The shallow mind is supplied with a wind of words: like a dictionary he is all words, but without a thought. The highest thought, the most profound feelings, are beyond the sphere of speech.

The restless wind is ever sighing; the restless, unbalanced soul is ever chattering its half-formed thoughts. The shallow brook splashes and dashes over its bed with noisy tongue; the deep river flows onward without a ripple on its broad surface to tell of its tremendous power.

If we would learn of nature we must retire to her solitudes and let no one intrude. The dearest and nearest may draw with well meaning hands an opaque vail between us and the sun. In the solitude of the forest, by the sh.o.r.es of the sullen sea, and in the depths of star-lit night, we rest as dwarfs, overpowered by the stupendous elements, yet the center of all forces and phenomena. We are in the vortex of creative energies, and if we silently question, the answers fall as soon as our minds are receptive to them. In its adoration of the boundless, the soul mirrors its own infinitude. The sh.o.r.eless expanse of sea, with sky and wave blending, lost in mist, in the never-reached horizon; the depths of stars, beyond and beyond, in vistas leading out into absolute void, beyond all created things--to such the soul acknowledges kinship, and in them finds its satisfaction. The thoughts of the stars are untongued, but they vibrate across the limitless ether, and are eloquent to the receptive mind.

Immeasurably more needful of receptivity born of silence, is the contact with the infinite realm of spirit. The ocean of being, invisible, is before us. We may not dictate, nor with blatant cry make demands. We shall be grateful for a grain of manna from the heavenly skies; we may gather a full repast. As spiritual beings, into the warp and woof of whose existence enter the strands of immortal life, we are capable of comprehending the laws of this unseen, and heretofore unknown universe.

As suns are pulsating centers of light, spiritual beings are pulsating centers of thought, and as light waves go out circling until lost on the remotest coast line of the universe, so thought-waves go out from the thinking mind, and are caught up by all minds receptive to them.

By the sea, the soul sees the inner world expressed by a series of changing pictures. The ships sailing from harbor, with all their white sails set, and bent to the breeze which wafts them into the gray mist until lost to view, express the voyage of human beings. The white birds, with flapping wings, are the purposeless spirits of the air. The stars, what consolation they have given the wretched in long ages of suffering, by their eternal placidity, their quietude from the feverish follies which we know intuitively belong to a lower life.